NCarolinian

Psalm 30:5 "Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning." "Anyone can give pep talks, but if God is who He claims to be, He sure as shootin' better have a word for the despondent. Self-help manuals might get you through a bad mood or a tough patch. But what about an abusive childhood or a debilitating accident or years of chronic pain or public ridicule? Does God have a word for the dark nights of the soul? He does. The promise begins with this phrase: 'Weeping may last through the night...". This is not news to you. But this may be: 'Joy comes with the morning'. Night might delay the dawn, but it cannot defeat it. Morning comes. Not as quickly as we want. Not as dramatically as we desire. But morning comes, and with it comes joy." (Lucado, p.118, Unshakable Hope) One of the great Biblical examples of this journey through our nights of life to the mornings of life is illustrated through the life of Mary Magda...

1 Peter 5:5 says that God Will Act On Your Choice - "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." One of the best examples of this in Scripture is King Nebuchadnezzar. God had sent the king messages that He, Jehovah God, was greater and that Nebuchadnezzar was not. Then God sent a dream to Nebuchadnezzar picturing him as a tree that would be cut down to the stump. The king did not take the symbolism of the dream seriously and proceeded to dive in to and enjoy his accomplishments with prideful comments. "God gave the king another year to climb down from his pompous throne. But he never did. Oh, the proliferation of pronouns. 'I have built', 'my mighty power', 'my majesty'. The king was all about the king." (Max Lucado, p.63, Unshakable Hope ) "When the mighty fall, the fall is mighty. And we are left with a lesson: God hates pride." (Lucado, p. 63 Unshakable Hope ) Nebuchadnezzar was humbled greatly for seven ye...

Max Lucado delivers us a better perspective on Joshua's conquest of the land of Cannan when he says, "We typically think of Joshua as taking the land. It's more precise to think of Joshua as taking God at His Word. Joshua took the land, for sure. But he did so because he trusted God's promise. The great accomplishment of the Hebrew people was this: they lived out of their inheritance. In fact, the story ends with this declaration: 'Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to their own inheritance.' " (Joshua 24:28) [ Unshakable Hope , p.41] That was a divvy of land as an inheritance. The New Covenant or New Testament we have in Christ establishes and affirms an inheritance in Father God through Jesus by a deposit of the Holy Spirit.  "Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come." (2 Corinthians ...

Want to know who and what The Bible is all about? The Bible from cover to cover, front to back is about Christ Jesus and the demonstration of how much He loves us.  Throughout the Old Testament this observation can be drawn - a relationship is broken, a temporary fix is applied, and a prophetic solution is mentioned.  The Old Testament has many stories that teach us life and historical lessons. It also contains a plethora of requirements for relationship restoration between us and God. This Law over our relationship with God was set up to show us that we could never fulfill it . The Law could never be met except by God Himself in the flesh and the Old Testament foreshadows of the time when Christ Jesus would come and do just that.  At the end of the Old Testament we arrive at the beginning of the New Testament, known as The Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Word of God in flesh arrives on the world scene and these books tell Christ's main stories, His wor...

As far as relationships go - God knows everything about me. I still have all of eternity to get to know my Savior, God and King, but I thank Him that He has provided me that privilege. My favorite Psalm, Psalm 139, speaks to God's side of my relationship. It declares... You know my thoughts before I speak them. (v.4) You know where I am for You are always with me. (v.7-12) You created me in your mind's eye and knew all my days before anybody else. (v.16) This seems kind of a useless relationship when one side knows everything about the other, even what the other person is about to say - I might as well not speak. Yet, the Holy Spirit had Paul write - " For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:16-17) Paul, in this condensed versi...

Is there really anything under our control? Like the movie series "The Matrix" spells out - we might go about our daily lives making decisions, but those decisions are all part of a Master Program that has been played out in a File called "History" - or so it seems that way.  Control is just an illusion. Life is a myriad of choices made every split second by us because we do not know what is in our next moment. However, God stands outside the Computer that has the Master Program running. God is outside of Time, Space and History. He is at the Beginning and at The End and everywhere in between. He knows. He is the builder of the Computer and all of its equipment as well as all the programming. Luke reminds us in Acts 17:28 of a philosophy put forth by a Cretan philosopher named Epimenides that said,  ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ We are inside Him as though every air and water molecule surrounding us were His "Holy Cells". Plus,...

What does it mean to be an Equipped Christian? ·        It means you Take Advantage of the Resources at your disposal. God did not bless us with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus for us to sit on it. Nor did He in like manner bless us in every other resource for us not to actively serve Him. ·        It means we Go! God gave us a Commission, not a Suggestion. The sacrifice He made for us should compel the believer, especially the Equipped Christian, to Preach/Teach/Share the Good News of Christ to Everyone – being aligned with God’s Heart that none should perish, but all should come to the saving knowledge of Christ Jesus. ·        It means we take care of our Equipment. Our equipment can range from physical tools we use like a sound system, to the teachings that are used, to the individual Christian worker/warrior that is serving. We take care of our equipment by giving it or ...